Goodbye
by zosimos
Summary: Musebox, prompt #26 of 50. Closure.


Edward stood beside Kenshin, feeling awkward and self-conscious. Very few people had even glanced at them as they entered the small cemetery, but Edward always felt self-conscious in this country where his bright yellow hair and tanned skin marked him as an outsider. He glanced around to confirm his suspicious, but they were alone.

He couldn't read the kanji that decorated the complicated tombstones and wooden stakes behind them. Edward might have been picking up Japanese faster than most, and could at least speak it with some degree of confidence, he couldn't make heads or tails of kanji just yet.

They were in the country with Kennichi, actually. Kennichi had some lead or another on the person responsible for the death of his family, and his subsequent warding to the state that left him in the care of the government agency. He was going to run off in the night to deal with this but Kenshin wouldn't let him; and hell if Edward was going to let Kenshin run off halfway across the world without him. Kennichi was currently sleeping off the jet lag in the hotel in Tokyo, when he was tired he tended to drop into wolf form unconsciously and after a brief snarling argument with Kenshin had acquiesced and fallen into a deep sleep.

Edward was too wide-awake to think about sleep, Japan was new and foreign and he wanted a look around. Kenshin had remarked that he had an errand to attend to, and Edward was only too eager to accompany him. However, instead of seeing the city, they sojourned to a Buddhist temple, before Kenshin asked directions to an old cemetery.

Japanese cemeteries were positively claustrophobic in comparison to anything else Edward had ever seen. He could tell almost instantly that the culture relied on cremation because there was no way the bodies could be buried with the gravestone plots practically sitting on top of each other. Kenshin glanced left and right, plowing up and down the aisles until he found what he was looking for. It was smaller than some of the other, more elaborate gravestones and it was set further back, among older and more neglected-looking plots.

Edward looked around again, feeling eyes burning into the back of his neck but still not seeing anyone looking directly at him. Kenshin seemed to sense his unease and glanced over at him. "You didn't have to come with me," he said quietly, not wanting to disrupt the serenity of the cemetery.

He nodded. "Yeah, I know," Edward said, just as quietly. "But you looked like you needed the support." He glanced to the gravestone. "Who are we visiting, an old friend?"

Kenshin's eyes flicked to the gravestone, and he gave a pained smile to Edward. "It's my family's plot, Edward."

Only then Edward realized that the handful of kanji he recognized were not because of words, but because he had seen them in Kenshin's last name. "I thought you were an orphan?" Edward said, and then realized what Kenshin meant. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"No, it's all right." Kenshin said, nodding his head once. "It's a unique situation. How many people get to visit their own grave, almost a century after they die?" He exhaled. "I had to visit it, at least once."

Edward shivered despite himself. He knew that the wooden slats behind the gravestone held names, and with a little bit of skill he could pick out the family name on each one. Kenshin stepped forward, producing a faded blue ribbon from his pocket. Edward watched silently as Kenshin stooped and tied it around one of the wooden slats, his fingers lingering a moment over the kanji, before backing away and straightening.

He remembered Kenshin coming across the old blue ribbon in one of the boxes in the Kansaki Sou's attic. It was that same box that held an ancient sepia-colored photograph that had caused Kenshin to actually disappear for a few days. Edward didn't ask, he didn't have to. Kenshin tried his best to leave his past in the past, but it wasn't something he could always accomplish.

Kenshin looked at Edward and smiled. It was a gentle smile, and the sadness seemed gone from his eyes, finally. Edward smiled back at him. "Thank you for coming," Kenshin said.

They left the cemetery then, and Kenshin didn't look back. The flutter of the tattered blue ribbon did catch Edward's eye and as they turned the corner, he hesitated a second and swore for a second he saw a raven-haired woman in a vibrant blue kimono with that same ribbon in her hair, standing before the grave they had left.

She was smiling.

Edward blinked and she was gone. He looked around again, then hurried to catch up to Kenshin, who was waiting patiently at the entrance of the cemetery for Edward to stop being distracted. Edward slipped his hand into Kenshin's, and they left together.


End file.
